World Health Organization in her meeting on Monday chaired by its Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, received the recommendation from its International Health Regulations Emergency Committee which suggested that though there is still global deaths recorded from COVID-19, the pandemic is probably at a transition point. The committee also advised that care should not be thrown to the wind to avoid negative impacts from the ravaging virus.
According to the director general of WHO, there is still a high risk of COVID-19 global transmission, which means the virus is still classified as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. So far, a lot of concerns have been put in place to eliminating the insurgent virus, luckily, much effects are on the positive side.
He further noted that the world is in the best position it has been in, and ready to continue to face the pandemic headlong especially with the diagnostics, vaccines and treatments on ground to defeat the hydra-headed monster, COVID-19.
It is worthy of note that this Coronavirus Disease 2019 (code named COVID-19) pandemic caused the death of many people from around the globe in 2020 and part of 2021. It started gradually in Wuhan China and later spread to other countries like wildfire.
However, the death toll has continued to be on a downward trend since 2022. This downward trend has so far been attributed to the WHO rapid response to curb the spread of the virus through development and approval of several vaccines to curtail the spread. Several variant of the virus have emerged showing relative changes in the symptoms and mortality rate. Fortunately, the health solution on ground has been breaking ground and making good records.
Unfortunately, many countries have made moves to drop the protocol at hand that has shown much success in the fight against the virus. This is why the agency warmed against any attempt to mismanage this covid-19 transition period. Therefore, it is important for all the health agencies to continue to sustain the tempo used in the fight to ensure that there is absolute defeat to this covid-19 virus and its variants.
Tedros commended the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee in their resolve to continue to boost COVID-19 free globe.
“As we enter the fourth year of the pandemic, we are certainly in a much better position now than we were a year ago, when the omicron wave was at its peak, and more than 70,000 deaths were being reported to WHO each week,” Tedros said during the meeting, according to a transcript provided by the WHO.
“When you last met in October, the number of weekly reported deaths was near the lowest since the pandemic began — less than 10 thousand a week. However, since the beginning of December, the number of weekly reported deaths globally has been rising,” Tedros continued. “But the global response remains hobbled because in too many countries, these powerful, life-saving tools are still not getting to the populations that need them most – especially older people and health workers.”
During the WHO meeting, Tedros urged groups at higher risk of severe disease and death to be fully vaccinated and boosted. Those who are immunocompromised as a result of the diseases like HIV/AIDS, long standing Diabetes, hypertension, other chronic diseases and those who are elderly are all at risk of contracting the virus. He also encouraged more countries to ramp up testing and use antivirals early on among those who test positive for COVID-19.
There have also been periodic changes to the WHO protocols for prevention of the virus. Everyone should therefore, continue to prevent the spread of the virus at personal level and communal level by presenting to appropriate health personnel at the onset of symptoms. Symptoms such as loss of sense of smell and taste, and also other flue symptoms are pointers to it. There is currently the use of rapid diagnostic kits as an approach to ensure fast diagnosis. The vaccine and treatment of the virus are handled as an issue of global health emergency.